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Doctor Who Review: Last Christmas

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE 2014 CHRISTMAS SPECIAL

Poster Copyright RadioTimes & Stuart Manning.

The Episode

The Doctor returns to Clara's life when she finds Santa Claus on the roof of her home, and he pops up in the TARDIS. Soon it becomes clear that this all runs deeper than it seems as The Doctor and Clara are wrapped up (no pun intended) in a story about these nightmare-ensuing monsters who force you to dream as they kill you. This begs the question: what is real and what,dear reader, is simply a dream?

The Review

This was a slightly strange episode for me and, by looking at people's comments, has divided opinions somewhat. From what I can see there are two camps of people; those who loved it and those who hated. Let me now create the third camp that kind of agrees with both.

On one side (those who loved it) I can totally see their argument. Often I hate the Christmas Special for trying to be too Christmassy. Something I loved about last years was that it obviously wasn't a normal episode, but we were bombarded with over-Christmassy things. This year seems to continue that trend. There is the questionable appearance of Santa Claus, which I think is possibly one of my favourite performances in Doctor Who ever but other than that nothing screamed "Crimbo" to us.

Another great thing about the episode, as I mentioned briefly in the previous paragraph, was the acting quality from the guest stars, and the scripts they had to work with which were expertly crafted as funny but not obnoxious. Which was lovely!

Now to the other camp, where things are less happy with the episode, and where I can fully understand why. Although I though the whole concept was extremely interesting and on the whole a very good idea, I think the whole "You're not dreaming......oh wait! Yes you are!!!" thing got old quite quickly (especially with old-Clara) and should have happened once or twice less.

Although the cameo's were very good I wasn't hugely impressed with some of the acting, and found it a trifle wooden. Which is a shame considering how much I rang the praises of the cast in series 8 reviews.

Among the other things I didn't like were the sleigh-ride at the end of the episode which was incredibly cheesy, and was the water for the growth of that tree of wooden acting. And also something I noticed was how big Clara's house seemed to be, which was a little strange I thought.

The addition of Danny was good and helped to wrap the last series up, but I thought how quickly The Doctor and Clara brushed off each other's lies was very unnatural and should have been made more of.

So there it is, my middle camp. But, what did you think? Let me know below or on Twitter!